Covenant

by Jeff Gulvin

  With the morning came the sun and he stood by the doorway with his jacket off, just a loose-fitting, yellow singlet exposing sinewy arms and his Tunnel Rat tattoo. Somebody scuffed a boot behind him, and he whirled, crouched and balled his fists.

  The bigger of the two, the ginger-headed one, was on his feet and he stood much taller than Harrison. His thighs bulged at the material of his jeans and his belly was exposed at the belt. He lifted a palm as if to calm a child and shook his shaggy head. ‘You are one jumpy motherfucker.’

  Harrison straightened and looked him in the eye. ‘It’s why I’m still alive.’ He crouched by his pack once more and unscrewed the lid on the water bottle.

  The ginger-headed man slouched against the doorjamb. He rolled a cigarette, licked the paper and stuck it in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Where we at?’ his partner asked, and Harrison glanced at him. He was looking at the other man, shading his eyes from the sun. Harrison noticed he was resting one arm on a square package, which was inside a canvas holdall.

  ‘Lufkin.’ The ginger-headed man looked back. ‘We’re coming into Lufkin.’

  ‘Good. I need to get me something to eat.’ The black-haired man got up, stretched and looked down at Harrison, who was busy fastening the straps on his pack. The train would stop at the freight yard and he had no option but to get off. The man stared at him, and Harrison ignored him, and then he nudged his partner.

  Harrison saw him motion, out of the corner of his eye. ‘Am I wearing something of yours?’ he said without looking up.

  ‘Brother, you got a bad mouth.’

  Harrison stood up and looked him in the eye. ‘I ain’t your brother.’ He shouldered the pack and stepped towards the door. This was the moment: the train was slowing down and if they were going to whack him, it was going to be now. But they did not. They looked at him strangely, their gaze shifting to his arm, and if they were carrying guns, they did not think of going for them. Harrison stood at the edge of the boxcar until the train slowed a little more and then he dropped down, bending his knees to absorb the impact. The train rattled on and he looked up and left, the wind catching his hair, and saw the pair of them still staring from the open doorway.

  It took three minutes for the rest of the train to pass and then Harrison could step across the tracks. He could see Lufkin City limits to his left, and, shouldering his pack, he took the banjo by the neck and started walking. He considered his actions and figured he had made the right choice. It pleased him. Instinct. A tight situation and his instincts had been spot on. Like being an animal again. He always felt like an animal when he went undercover. He worked on his guts and so far they had not failed him.

  Those last few minutes puzzled him, though: there was something about the way they had looked at him, which he could not quite comprehend. He walked on towards the city, hungry, and the pack all at once weighty between his shoulders. A vacant lot, concreted flat, stretched between himself and the highway, and he paused as an Angelina County sheriff’s cruiser idled by, the deputy behind the wheel giving him the once-over from behind Ray-Ban aviators. Harrison ignored him and walked with his head down, hair hanging loose to his shoulders from under his hat. The sun beat on his back and he could feel the straps of the pack chafing as he made his way towards the neon lights of the town.

  He ate a breakfast of pancakes and molasses, followed by eggs, hash browns and strips of crispy bacon. He sat on a swivel stool and had to place a fistful of cash on the counter before the waitress got rid of the bad taste in her mouth. She poured him a glass of iced water, which he downed in one, and then some coffee. A couple of good old boys sat at a table, drinking coffee and smoking, but apart from that, Harrison was the only diner. Halfway through his meal the door opened, and he felt rather than saw the two Southern Blacks walk in. They stowed their gear in a booth and slid into the vinyl seats, and he heard one of them mutter something about him, but he ignored it and kept on eating. He had thought it likely that they would get off here, with the train pulling into the yard to be unloaded. There would be guards everywhere, and workers, and he assumed they must have ditched the ride somewhere after he did. He wondered where they were going, and determined, if it was possible, to be on the same train when they left.

  He finished his breakfast, accepted some more coffee and rolled a thin cigarette. The waitress watched him and she watched the two guys in black bandanas, and then the diner started filling up. A couple of truckers rolled in and Harrison was flanked on either side, his banjo up against his knees. He considered his next move, toying with a packet of sugar, then glanced over his shoulder at the two men in the booth. The ginger-headed man caught his eye and Harrison looked away again, and placed a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. Getting up, he hefted his pack. The water bottle was empty and he passed it over the counter and asked the waitress to fill it for him. The old man on the stool next to his looked distastefully at him. Harrison met his eye and the old man looked hurriedly away.

  The action was not missed by the two Southern Blacks and the ginger-headed one leaned towards his buddy. ‘Thinks he’s a mean sonofabitch, don’t he?’ he muttered.

  Harrison collected the water bottle from the waitress and picked up his change. She glowered at him, shook her head and tutted. The last thing he was going to do was leave her a tip. He drew alongside the men in the booth, then he bent and looked the ginger one right in the eye.

  ‘Yeah, he does,’ he said, and for a second the man’s face burned. ‘Seeing as how you’re so talkative,’ Harrison went on, ‘where’d a fella go to get a train outta here?’

  The ginger-headed man stared at him then and Harrison knew what was running through his mind. Normally, people backed off him. Nobody would backchat him. He wore the colours. He was all of 240 pounds and here was this skinny, ageing ex-con badmouthing him every step of the way.

  The dark-haired man spoke. ‘Take a right outside the door and keep walking,’ he said. ‘Keep right on through town and you’ll hit the skids in the north-east.’

  Harrison nodded once. ‘Obliged,’ he muttered, and then the red-headed guy grabbed him by the forearm. Harrison looked at the man’s hand and then into his eyes; and his own gaze dulled, and his face set cold as it had in the tunnels of Cu-Chi all those years ago.

  The man stared back at him and squeezed his arm slowly. ‘See you around,’ he said.

  Harrison walked through town and bought some more biscuits and some fruit. He stocked up on rolling tobacco and purchased a tin of Copenhagen, and saw the same deputy eyeing him from the cruiser, which stood at the lights. Harrison ignored him and walked on. The last thing he needed was to be stopped, what with two guns and Rambo’s knife in his bag. He kept walking right through the town and, as the buildings thinned into nothing and mesquite and sagebrush took over, he saw the deputy for the third time. ‘Don’t worry, asshole,’ Harrison muttered to himself. ‘I’m outta here.’

  He sat on a hill overlooking the Texas South-Eastern line and watched the grainer, empty now, take on a fresh cargo. The railroad hands worked hard—cranes, trucks and men all over the yard, a hive of activity. Below him, the tracks swept in an arc of sunlit iron, before heading south across the flatlands as far as the eye could see. Harrison had never liked Texas and had spent as little time here over the years as he could. The land was flat and featureless, and the weather either blisteringly hot or cold enough to freeze your feet off. The sun was at its height now and Harrison sweated where he sat. He wanted a good vantage point, though, because he needed to see when the train pulled out and he wanted to keep a lookout for his two bandana-wearing friends. There was no sign of them right now, however, and he moved down and sat on a gravel bar in the partial shade of a cottonwood tree.

  A rattlesnake moved out from behind a rock, slithering soundlessly at the edge of the trickle of water, and paused to soak up the sun. Harrison watched it. The snake was a diamondback and very thick about the middle, its head flat, low and unmoving. It was no more
than five feet away from him, but he did not move and neither man nor beast bothered one another. They both remained exactly where they were, taking in the stillness broken only by the scraping of crickets in the grass. For some reason, Harrison was back in Vietnam, watching one particular hole where one of those thin, black and deadly poisonous serpents was weaving through the grass. No one would go near the hole or try to shift the snake. It was the kind that the VC liked to place in the punji stake mantraps, so you’d be bitten to death once you’d been impaled. The snake was nervous, unsure of which way to go with so many people around. No one would touch it and old Ray Martinez was positively sweating. The Probe: that stone-cold killer who would prefer to crawl alone underground than buddy up. Nothing frightened him, not anything, except that was, the snakes. It occurred to Harrison that maybe he only went underground as some form of macabre metaphorical flagellation. Martinez was a God-fearing Catholic, who had done some pretty nasty things in his life. Harrison often wondered if being a Tunnel Rat wasn’t some uneducated way of trying to avoid purgatory. One night in the hootch, while Martinez was high on grass, Harrison had put it to him. Martinez had rolled on his side and looked dull-eyed at him. ‘Yeah, right, Johnny. Go to hell to avoid purgatory.’

  The rattler moved off again, as softly and soundlessly as it arrived, heading away from Harrison and under the lip of a flat, platter-like boulder which stood up from the gravel bar. A red-tailed hawk screeched high in the sky and Harrison shaded his eyes with a palm, but could not see it. He drank some water, thought about the past and then got to his feet. Back at his vantage point, he could see the train was still being loaded, but coming along the tracks were two figures dressed in black.

  The Cub flew into Dulles Airport and transferred to the main terminal on the weird buses that lifted on hydraulics. He cleared customs, stepped out on to hot tarmac and tied back his hair. A yellow cab idled beside the stop for the Washington Flyer and The Cub climbed in the back.

  ‘Where’d you wanna go, buddy?’ The black driver leaned over the seat and looked at him. The Cub wore sunglasses and a white T-shirt that stretched across the tightly woven muscles of his chest. ‘The Best Western in Leesburg,’ he said, and settled against the seat. The driver shoved the old Buick into gear and took off with a jerk. He dropped The Cub in front of the hotel and helped him with his small, lightweight travel bag. The Cub paid and tipped him, and walked out of the heat into the air-conditioned lobby. The receptionist looked up and smiled at him.

  ‘Mr Johnson,’ he said, ‘from Montana.’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Johnson. I have your reservation right here.’ She passed him the registration card to fill out and The Cub scribbled down the details. ‘Are there any messages for me?’ he asked.

  She went through to the office and came out with a slip of paper. ‘Mr Goodby called and said he would meet you as arranged tonight.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The Cub took the paper, picked up his key and bag and went up to his room. He showered and changed, flicked through various mind-numbing channels on television and then went out. Birch had said an Irish bar in the parade of shops on the right-hand side of the road, across from the Ford dealer. The Cub walked past the all-night store and got the eye from a bunch of punk kids. Cars passed him as he traversed the three hundred yards of highway and he got the usual strange looks. Nobody walked anywhere in America. He had been stuck in Pakistan for so long, he had forgotten.

  He was there first, and ordered a tall glass of beer and drank it slowly. The bartender was chatty and told him to stick around for the band later—some girl and a guitarist. At seven-thirty, the bar was pretty full and The Cub sat at a table by himself, well away from the door. Every now and then a few single guys on their own would approach the table to sit down, but he would lift his head just slightly, look through his sunglasses and they would walk away again. At a quarter to eight, Birch came in, dressed in beige chinos and a bottle-grey polo shirt. He wore no socks, just a pair of very soft loafers that exposed his suntanned ankles. He sat down opposite The Cub and signalled the bar for a vodka and a fresh beer. Birch sat forward then, hands clasped and smiled.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

  The Cub sat easily, one arm on the table, flicking the dirt from under his nails.

  ‘So, he wasn’t there?’

  The Cub shook his head.

  ‘It made the papers. He’s used it as a propaganda weapon. We’re denying we know anything about it, of course, but the journalist was shot and his body dumped. They left him with a sign round his neck saying “Made in America”.’ Birch stopped talking as the waitress returned with their drinks.

  ‘You live out this way?’ The Cub asked him, when she had gone.

  ‘You think I’d tell you that?’ Birch sat forward again. ‘The Australians have made a few noises in private, asking us if we knew what was going on. The President is pissed off about it all.’

  ‘Is he? There’s a thing.’ The Cub sat forward then. ‘You tell the sonofabitch that I’m pissed off, so he should worry.’ He looked left and right. ‘They knew. They knew right from the get-go. He was never there. They knew something was going down. We never saw the main man. We got Mujah al-Bakhtar instead.’

  Birch’s face lost its smile. ‘The Butcher of Bekaa?’

  ‘In person.’ The Cub made a face. ‘Tell me something, Cyrus, there’s no more than twelve people apart from me who knew about this, right?’

  ‘In totality, yes.’ Birch nodded. ‘But you know the game. The Talent set the thing rolling, that involves people on the ground in Pakistan. We send in one man to sit and scratch his ass for a year. Pakistan neighbours Afghanistan. Someone could work it out.’

  The Cub sipped beer. ‘The kid I mentioned.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘We had a conversation.’

  Birch felt the familiar shiver run down his spine. He could not recall a single face-to-face meeting with this man when he did not experience the sensation. ‘What was that about?’ he said quietly.

  The Cub looked at the bar. ‘He said the game’s changed, Cyrus. Gone are the days of big compounds and massive infrastructure.’

  ‘So what were you in, if not a big compound?’

  ‘They were winding it down, shifting everything out. Every vehicle in the place was being gassed up ready to roll.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Bin Laden really has disappeared. His own crew don’t know where he’s at.’ He rested on his elbows. ‘The last time Moore interviewed him, before he blew us up in Africa, he figured something out. With all those men and all those guns around, the chances of somebody taking him out were growing by the day.’

  ‘So he took off?’

  ‘Exactly. He’s still the master of the game, but he’s playing by different rules now.’

  ‘Somebody must know where he is.’

  ‘I figure one man does, and where he shows up, so will Bin Laden.’

  Birch looked at him over the top of his glass. ‘The Butcher of Bekaa,’ he said.

  11

  SWANN AND LOGAN WERE working their way through a printout of Japanese Red Army attacks over the years, when Carmen McKensie came into Kovalski’s office. ‘Chey, I think you better look at this,’ she said. Logan took the paper from her and scanned it.

  ‘What is it?’ Swann asked her.

  Logan looked back at McKensie. ‘Has Kovalski seen it?’

  McKensie shook her head.

  ‘Get a hold of him.’

  ‘What is it?’ Swann asked her again.

  ‘It’s from the National Crime Information Center,’ she said. ‘A deputy sheriff in Lander County, Nevada, has just reported an abduction.’

  ‘A child?’

  Logan laughed. ‘Hardly. A six foot three, two-hundred-pound male, Jack. Tommy Anderson, a miner who helped form the Nevada Unorganised Militia. He was drinking in Austin, comes out of the bar to get in his truck, and a witness from the motel across the st
reet sees three Asian men take him and his truck at gunpoint.’

  Swann stared at her. ‘You’re joking.’

  She shook her head. ‘I wish I was, because it gets worse. The sheriff’s department is called and they start to search. There’s only two ways out of Austin, so they commandeer a chopper from the BLM and find the truck, abandoned in the mountains. Right beside it are the marks from the skids of another helicopter.’ She drew in a stiff breath. ‘This is gonna send the militia loco, Jack. Either we’ve got some very bad agents out there, or somebody is fucking with us big time.’

  ‘It better be the latter.’ Kovalski spoke from where he stood in the doorway.

  Logan and Swann flew to Reno. Tim Reilly, ah FBI man with the resident agency office in Carson City, met them. Carson City, rather than Elko, had been designated to deal with the Tommy Anderson abduction and Reilly did not look overly enamoured with the situation. Logan rode up front with him and Swann leaned between their seats. Reilly was talking: ‘I guess the “blue flamers” at the puzzle palace are getting pretty concerned.’ He glanced at Logan’s thoughtful face. ‘Pataki and Hope Heights, and now this thing here in Nevada.’

  They left the interstate for Highway 50, which entered the desert at Fallon, and rode all the way to the Utah line. Austin was about a hundred and fifty miles due east. Logan gauged the trip to take normally about three hours, but Reilly had the light flashing on the dashboard and was leaving what little traffic there was back in his wake.

  She had persuaded Kovalski to let her go and leave McKensie in D.C. co-ordinating the Harada bombing investigation. Somehow, she had also managed to persuade him that Swann’s impartial presence was invaluable. Kovalski had been less convinced about that, but cut her the slack nonetheless.

  ‘Have you got any leads as to what happened after the truck was dumped?’ Logan asked Reilly. He shook his head.